Last week, EV Grieve unearthed an interesting find. A blogger and accurately-self-proclaimed pack-rat named Marc H. Miller (aka 98Bowery) posted audio from some of his old answering machine messages from the 1980s. While that might sound somewhat mind-numbing, the end results are actually pretty engaging: fleeting, sonic snapshots of a bygone age wherein even banal minutia takes on a fascinating sheen. One guy calls about a bounced check. One slurry-spoken woman calls about vague evening plans. Another friend calls to say her apartment's been robbed. A guy from the East Village Eye calls to invite Marc to a group photo session. A downstairs neighbor calls to thank him for tending their roof garden. It's a bit like eaves-dropping through a time machine.
I had a similar reaction recently when I viewed a set of pics sent by a reader named Julie Wilson. In a series of informal photographs dubbed "NYC 1978-1983," Julie's pictures capture a candid taste of a downtown Manhattan that seems all but extinct. The city appears in tantalizing glimpses in the background of portraits and casual snapshots of friends. Music fans might recognize a few shots of nascent incarnations of No Wave/"Mutant Disco" bands Liquid Liquid and Konk and even John Sex (of John Sex & the Bodacious TaTa's). I'm projecting, of course, but there's a refreshing innocence to these images of young bohemians and musicians in un-ironic skinny ties. It makes one wonder where these people are today and what they'd have to say about NYC 2010.
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